Violence and Valentines

I heard my daughter throwing a giant fit upstairs the other day, and since my sister was just reading to her from “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” I figured there was some plot twist that didn’t meet with her approval. I was correct: For whatever reason, my kid was lead to believe that her fiction-crush Klaus was going to be seriously injured. “But he wasn’t!” she wailed. “Boy that must have been a relief,” I replied, completely puzzled. She looked at me with disdain. “No, I wanted him to get hurt.” she replied.

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Don’t read into this too much.

Turns out my child likes it when the boys she likes (and I think we’ve established this is no small percentage of the population) get hurt or injured. This sort of perplexed me out for a while, since she couldn’t explain it to me and I wondered if I was raising a very precocious Marquis de Sade. But my sister, who is much better at the art of casual interrogation than I am, finally got to the heart of it. It seems that first-grade boys are somewhat loathe to hug and be affectionate, but when they get hurt, they are much more receptive to cuddling. Injury makes them more open and vulnerable, and this is just the opportunity my child looks for.

So yes, she’s the Queen of Pain. I’m thinking this year we could do Valentines that say, “Hurt so good.”

When I heard about her bloodlust, I suddenly remembered the way love was often expressed on the schoolyard. Sure, there might be talk of weddings or relationships, but the primary outlet for adoration was violence. This is why when you told your parents, “Dave pulled my hair while we were in the cafeteria line” they often said knowingly, “He probably likes you.” I’m sure child development experts have some very reasonable explanation for this, maybe something about violence being the more acceptable expression of affection with boys who contended that we had cooties or worse.

The only exception to this ban on the smackdown expression of affection was Valentine’s Day. You made a card for every kid in the class — or more accurately, bought a package of pre-made cards, maybe Star Wars themed with pictures of Luke Skywalker saying “May the force be with you, Valentine” — and put them in whatever little cubby or cardboard shoebox had been designated as the mailbag. But in each package of cards there were usually six different messages, and you selected who would get which card very carefully. While many cards had no subtext whatsoever, basically just wishing the recipient a good holiday, others had some little pun message like, “Yoda one for me” and that would go to the kid you had the hots for. It was a tense process, deciding how much you could actually reveal with that valentine but still be able to back out in the event of teasing (“Huh? You’re crazy, it was just a card, dork.”) If you think I was just an especially freaky kid who looked for hidden messages everywhere, Simpsons fans may remember what ensued when Lisa gave Ralphie a card that said “I choo-choo-choose you.” These were delicate interactions, with no real margin for error.

I remember sweating as I put my card in my crush’s box. I also remember getting a card from a boy who I swore hated me because he tormented me daily with variations on my name (yes, “Kelly” rhymes with all kinds of words like “smelly” and “belly.” Ha. Ha. Ha. I know you are, but what am I?) Not only did I get the race car that said, “Wheel you be mine?” as opposed to “Hope your Valentine’s Day is a gas,” but he had also written “I like you” in tiny letters, then erased it so vehemently that it left a white streak on the card and you could barely make out what it said. When I looked at him he turned bright red and sneered, “Jelly Belly.”

This year my kid will be handing out Harry Potter themed cards. Given her wandering eye, I just hope we have several that say, “You put a spell on me, Valentine” instead of the friendly, “Hope your day is magical.”

KELLY MILLS is a writer, editor, blogger, and sucka for her daughter’s theatrics. She has a fitness blog, Fitness Fixation, and also blogs about the world of parenting for Babble.com at Strollerderby and Droolicious.